Same Words Suggest Hillary Source Of Benghazi Lie

Benghazi: The language in an email from Obama aide Ben Rhodes used to prep Susan Rice is virtually identical to one issued by the former secretary of state 36 hours before — the first public official to mention the video.

One of the first questions we hope the Select Committee on Benghazi asks is who gave Ben Rhodes the authority and the content for the Sept. 14, 2012, email from him, an assistant to the president and deputy national security adviser, on how to prep Susan Rice for her talk show tour on Sept. 16 blaming a video for the terrorist attack.

Either Rhodes is the most powerful communications assistant in American history or he was instructed by superiors in the administration to launch the video lie.

A clue may be found in a State Department press release that night and in a comparison of emails sent 36 hours apart by Clinton and Rhodes.

At 10 p.m. Washington, D.C., time on Sept. 11, 2012, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton received a call from the man she wants to replace, President Obama, while terrorists were in the midst of massacring Americans in Benghazi, Libya.

The call came more than six hours after the attack started, more than an hour before Tyrone Woods and Glen Doherty were killed, and literally just minutes before Hillary first released a statement linking the slaughter to "inflammatory material posted on the Internet," a reference to an anti-Muslim video on YouTube.

At 10:07 p.m., when the attack was still going on, Hillary's State Department issued a statement that read: "Some have sought to justify this vicious behavior as a response to an inflammatory material posted on the Internet. ... Let me be clear: There is never any justification for violent acts of this kind."

This is an all too quick and curious assignment of blame that flies in the face of information flowing to the State Department confirming a terrorist attack.

At about 5 p.m., Obama, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Martin Dempsey had met at the White House. Panetta says it was then that he informed the president of the Benghazi attack.

That meeting occurred after Gen. Carter Ham, head of our African Command, told Panetta and Dempsey that AFRICOM knew it was terror 15 minutes after the attack began.

Fast-forward to 6:06 p.m. on Sept. 12 when Beth Jones, acting assistant secretary of state for the Near East, sends an email to top State Department officials that reads: "The group that conducted the attacks, Ansar al-Sharia, is affiliated with Islamic extremists."

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